How to Untangle an Incoherent Drone Policy

The Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001 didn't sufficiently address the scope of the conflict. Time for a fix.

By

Michael B. Mukasey

Feb. 18, 2013 6:52 p.m. ET

The late judge Henry Friendly is reputed to have deflated one eager law clerk by telling the young man that his memo contained much that was helpful and much that was new, but what was helpful wasn't new and what was new wasn't helpful. The same might be said of the Obama administration's recently leaked "white paper" on drone warfare—a document that has loosed a torrent of rhetoric from left and right questioning the president's authority ever to authorize the killing of an American in wartime. Although much of that...